Robin Ashenden is founder and ex-editor of the Central and Eastern European London Review. His detailed accounts of the media attacks on Lionel Shriver and Toby Young can be read on his substack ‘Letting the Child Run Riot’.
If the chaos of recent weeks in British politics has clarified anything, it’s the almost complete schism between Conservative MPs and the party’s members. That Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have made it to the final round of the Tory leadership contest, ahead of their more popular rivals, paints the Conservatives as a party that no longer
‘Every human life has many aspects,’ said the novelist Milan Kundera. ‘The past of each can just as easily arranged into the biography of a beloved statesman as into that of a criminal.’ Of no one has this been truer in recent days than our departing Prime Minister Boris Johnson. To read some of the
A few weeks after Putin’s war against Ukraine began on 24 February, an infamous article was published in RIA Novosti, a leading Russian state mouthpiece. Written by Timofey Sergeytsev, it was entitled ‘What Russia should do with Ukraine’ and was full of ideas. These included ‘ideological repression’ and ‘strict censorship’ for their neighbour country, not
Georgia seems to have gone Ukraine crazy since the outbreak of war in February. Taxi drivers have the Ukrainian flag on their dashboards. Takeaway coffees come in blue and yellow paper cups with ‘Glory to Ukraine’ written on them. Medicines come in blue and yellow bags. There are Ukrainian-coloured scooters for hire in Tbilisi and
